~ Abiding In Love

Christ the King

In man’s desire for freedom there is hidden the temptation to deny his own nature. Insofar as he wishes to desire everything and to be able to do everything and thus forget that he is a finite and created being, he claims to be a god. “You will be like God” (Gn. 3:5). These words of the serpent reveal the essence of man’s temptation; they imply the perversion of the meaning of his own freedom. Such is the profound nature of sin: man rejects the truth and places his own will above it. By wishing to free himself from God and be God himself, he deceives himself and destroys himself He becomes alienated from himself.

In his desire to be a god and to subject everything to his own pleasure, there is hidden a perversion of the very idea of God. God is love and truth in the fullness of the mutual gift of the Divine Persons. It is true that man is called to be like God. But he becomes like God not in the arbitrariness of his own good pleasure but to the extent that he recognizes that truth and love are at the same time the principle and purpose of his freedom. Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, 1986